Straw, Will
Position
Professor
Interest and Bio
Will Straw is Professor of Communications in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. As of July 1, 2011, he will be Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. In 2007-2008, he was Acting Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Dr. Straw was awarded the David Thomson Award for Graduate Supervision and Teaching from McGill University in 2006.Will Straw has been music correspondent for Prime Time (CBC Radio), popular culture correspondent for the Women's Television Network, and a cultural commentator for Newswatch (CBC Television, Montreal.) He comments regularly on media and cultural issues for a variety of media. In 2009-2010, Dr. Straw has been Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts (Belgrade,) the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Mexico City), and the Central European University (Budapest).Will Straw is interested in a range of topics, most of them having to do with media and cities. He is currently director of a research project, funded by the Quebec FQRSC, on "Media and Urban Life in Montreal." In another project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, he is comparing sensational, crime-oriented periodicals in Quebec, Mexico, the United States and France.
Projects
Publications
For a full list of projects, with links to articles and relevant websites, visit http://strawresearch.mcgill.ca/.
Recent publications by Dr. Straw include the editing or co-editing of several special issues of journals: "Cultural Memory and Digital Preservation" (special issue of Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies), "Bâtir: La ville intermédiale" (special issue of Intermédialités), "Dialogues théoriques sur la culture" (Special issue of Cahiers de recherché sociologique), "Are We American?" (special dossier in the journal Quebec Studies), and, forthcoming, "Small Parts, Small Players" (special dossier in the journal Screen). Recently, two co-edited books on urban culture have appeared: Circulation and the City: Essays on Urban Culture (co-edited with Alexandra Boutros, 2010), and Global Cities/Local Sites (co-edited with Douglas Tallack.)
Recent articles by Straw include the following:
"The Circulatory Turn." In The Wireless Spectrum: The Politics, Practices and Poetics of Mobile Media. Editors: Barbara Crow, Michael Longford, Kim Sawchuk. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.
"Cultural Production and the Generative Matrix: A Response to Georgina Born." Cultural Sociology, 4: 2 (2010), pp. 1-8.
"Letters of Introduction: Film Credits and Cityscapes. Design and Culture, vol. 2, no. 2 (2010), pp. 155-166.
""Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Scenes and Communities in Popular Music." Reprinted in Chris Rojek, editor,Leisure Studies (London and Thousand Oaks: Sage) pp. 375-396.
"Entsorgung der Tontrager: CDs auf dem Web durch die Stadt." Translated by Dorothea Lobbermann. In Anke Otlepp and Christoph Ribbat, eds. Mit den Dingen Leben: Zur Geschicte der Alltagsgegenstande. Berlin: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2010, pp. 287-296.
"Montreal and The Captive City." In Quebec Studies, vol. 33, no. 48 (Fall 2009-Winter 2010), pp. 13-24.
"Spectacles of Waste." In Alexandra Boutros and Will Straw, editors, Circulation and the City: Essays on Urban Culture. Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2010, pp. 184-213.
"Hawkers and Public Space: Free Commuter Newspapers in Canada." In Bart Beaty, Derek Briton, Gloria Filax and Rebecca Sullivan, eds. How Canadians Communicate III: Contexts of Canadian Popular Culture. Athabasca: AU Press, 2010, pp. 79-93.
"Reinhabiting Lost Languages: Guy Maddin's Careful." In David Church, editor, Playing with Memories: Essays on Guy Maddin. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2009, pp. 58-69.
"The Palace, the Terminal and the Park: Three Blocks in the Middle of Montreal." In Will Straw and Douglas Tallack, editors. Global Cities/Local Sites. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing/Universitas 21, 2009. U21 Ebook.
"Soft furnishings and social forms." Artecontexto (Madrid), vol. 22, no. 2 (2009).
"Cities of sin, backroads of crime." . In André Jansson and Amanda Lagerkvist, eds. Strange Spaces: Explorations into Mediated Obscurity. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 169-185
'Shifting Boundaries, Lines of Descent: Cultural Studies and Institutional Realignments in Canada,' Reprinted in Sourayan Mookerjea, Imre Szeman and Gail Faurcshou, editors, Canadian Cultural Studies: A Reader. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009, pp. 457-471.
"The Music CD and Its Ends." Design & Culture, vol. 1, no. 1 (2009), pp. 79-92.
Faculty page
Visit Professor Straw's faculty page here
